


in this valley of dying stars

by jacquessaintlaurent



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: And not happy either, Angst, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, bitty cameo, extremely minor Jack/Parse, hoooo boy this is not a happy fic, that's happy though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:56:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquessaintlaurent/pseuds/jacquessaintlaurent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s as if Jack’s 18th year was made up of those specific moments, and the bone-deep sadness, and nothing else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in this valley of dying stars

**Author's Note:**

> I literally cannot thank cloudsandpassingevents enough. Cheerleading, beta, everything. Where would I be without her? Probably dead in a ditch somewhere lbr
> 
> I didn’t feel any of the archive warnings technically applied, but full disclosure is in the end notes.
> 
> Title from TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men.

Jack remembers his time in rehab as a haze.

He remembers his time right before rehab as a haze, too. He’s better now, but in his darkest moments, he wonders if it was a good thing that he overdosed when he did. If he had held on until he had nothing else, when his body was tired down to his bones, his heart was torn and still, when hockey became even less of the sport he wanted to play, he’s certain he wouldn’t have made it.

Instead, he went to a rehab at a private facility his father paid a small fortune for. Not like they couldn’t afford it.

Looking back on it, Jack can't even remember what the room he stayed in for three months looked like. All he remembers from that entire year are certain, crystal-clear memories, the others fading into a crushing, tired sadness that permeated his entire consciousness. It’s as if Jack’s 18th year was made up of those specific moments, and the bone-deep sadness, and nothing else.

_/ _/ _/

He takes biweekly therapy sessions at rehab. The room is homey, toys and pillows and plants and colorful, plush couches. His therapist is sitting next to him on one of the couches, a notebook in hand.

Jack stares at the edge of the couch across from him. It’s a pasty green color, linen, threads of light and dark green thread running up and down. The color and texture is burned into his retinas from hours and hours of studying it.

“Jack,” she begins. “Tell me about yourself.”

It’s her usual opening. Jack always replies with the same thing. “I play hockey.”

“Tell me about hockey,” she requests. Jack tries not to be an asshole. He shrugs. Rubs at a dark spot of water on his jeans, from when he was washing his hands earlier.

“Do you like it?”

Jack nods. “Sure,” he says, quiet and hoarse. “I like it fine.”

It sounds as if she’s going to go on with her usual opening, asking Jack how the past few days have been, but she doesn’t. “Do you like yourself?”

What Jack remembers most is how quiet it’d gone - not even a breath, from either him or his therapist. He coughs. Stares at the green linen couch. Doesn’t answer.

_/ _/ _/

He wakes up. The nurse tells him his parents are here. “Do you want to see them?” she asks, trying to start conversation, not expecting the answer she gets.

“No,” Jack says. He doesn’t see his parents until he’s discharged from the hospital.

_/ _/ _/

Jack likes his therapist, he thinks. He can’t remember her name or what hair color she had or even what she looked like, but he remembers her voice, the way she only rarely took notes. She was just there to talk, she told Jack. She seemed to be telling the truth. She told Jack sometimes about her college days, the pranks and good times she and her friends had, in between studying for finals and procrastinating on essays.

She’s laughing as she says, between breaths, “I’ll still never forget the look on his face.  _ Utter _ betrayal. He was scared to study with us for weeks after that.”

Jack smiles, sees a bit of his old teammates and their pranks in her stories.  _ It wouldn’t be so bad _ , he thinks.

She pauses. “Of course, when he did come back to study with us, it was to flirt outrageously with and then ask out my brother, in the span of five minutes. They’ve been married for twenty years now.” She smirks. “I told the same story at their wedding.”

She moves on, telling Jack about how grad school was much more work and much less play. Jack isn’t listening. He’s hearing what his therapist said, between the lines. Jack’s stuck on how easily it falls from her lips, happy and carefree, and wants.

When Jack gets out of rehab and has to decide what to do next, he thinks of her stories, and starts looking up colleges.

_/ _/ _/

Jack takes his parents’ calls and endures their visits. He doesn’t want them to worry, but he doesn’t have much to say much to them right now. Just lets them know he’s still breathing.

He waits for Parse to call.

_/ _/ _/

Jack’s hands are shaking. He scored the winning goal today, and his hands haven’t stopped shaking since. Behind him, in the hotel room, Parse is sleeping on one of the beds, naked and sweaty. The other bed, the one by the window, is completely made, immaculate, not a wrinkle out of place.

Something about the perfect, wrinkle-less bed bothers him. He goes to sit down on it, then changes his mind, gets up, looks at Parse. Parse didn’t help this time. The pills didn’t help either, even when he took double the dose. The thought makes Jack’s breaths come even harder. If Parse can’t help, if the pills have stopped working, how else is he going to survive?

He stumbles into the bathroom, roots around his toiletry bag. He has to try again. His face looks gray, ashen, unhealthy in the squeaky clean hotel mirror. He takes a pill. Then another. And another. He doesn’t think.

_/ _/ _/

It’s a nicer day today, and Jack gets to work out for a bit before going into his session. When he lets himself in, his therapist is still chuckling at a joke she just read in a magazine, and she reads it out loud to Jack, unable to keep from snickering at times. Jack laughs, too. It was a pretty funny joke, but Jack cannot, for the life of him, remember what the joke is now.

Instead, his brain latches on to what his therapist says next. The cadence of her voice, the slow, measured, way she asks, her eyes dark and sad. The completely blunt way she speaks, like no one has to him since his overdose. It’s such a complete turn from the joke moments before that Jack can still feel himself reeling from the whiplash.

“Let’s talk about the overdose,” she says. Jack calms himself. He knew it was coming.

“Do you remember it?”

Jack nods. Every single fucking detail, he wants to say. Tries to think of something better to say.

“Why did you overdose?” her voice is gentle.

Jack hasn’t been able to answer a single question well so far. “Sorry,” he says, uncomfortable.

“Jack,” she says. Pauses.

“Was it an accident?”

_/ _/ _/

Once, months before, Jack had looked it up. He was in another hotel room, on the bed, late at night. Parse was on the other bed, snoring.

He had his laptop on him, just finished Skyping his parents. He had sat there for a while, unthinking. His mother had asked how he was, how Parse was, how the food was, how practice was going, if he was nervous, and that she missed him. Jack said a variation of “good” and “okay” for each one, and “me too.”

He typed it in, waited for the results to load. He had to do some digging, as it turned out, because no one wanted to give the exact number, for obvious reasons. Jack wasn’t stupid, though. He figured it out.

He made sure he had at least that many pills on him wherever he went.

_/ _/ _/

“I don’t know,” Jack says.

_/ _/ _/

Jack doesn’t watch television very often, but there’s only so much he can do in rehab. He steers away from the hockey channels, watches more TV dramas and mind-numbing reality shows. Once, as he flips through channels, the picture of an ice rink catches his eye.  _ Don’t do it _ , he tells himself, but he flips back to the channel anyway.

It isn't a hockey game.  _ Southern Junior Regionals _ , the script on the bottom of the screen reads. It’s some kind of ice skating competition. Just looking at the ice seizes Jack in a sudden fit of nostalgia. He shrugs to himself. It’s not as if he hasn't watched stranger things, cooped up in rehab.

He sets the remote down as a competitor steps onto the ice. Small, blond, fast–and happy, Jack realizes. His enthusiasm glows through, and Jack is captivated. The competitor dances and twirls his way across the ice, smiling and having the best time of his life.

It’s beautiful.

Jack suddenly wishes that he was there. He wants to be back on the ice.

Grabbing the old landline from his bedside table, he calls his parents.

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily implied underage between Jack and Parse, but nothing graphic. Depression and thoughts of suicide. Attempted suicide.


End file.
